Consequence exists because of Time. Time without consequence is a vapid, material based reality, but it is only that–a reality, unsubstantiated by roots in the stuff of real substance. However, although consequences exist only within the context of time like two arrows spinning around the face of a clock, the quality of consequences unbind time’s parameters and supersede the tensed system entirely.

The quality and function of consequence, thus, is paradoxical. Time twists two arrows of consequence into a cross stitch, splitting the purest form of the concept like a prism to white light. We live within the realm of time, and encounter the shattered glass reflections of broken consequences, carrying on and on and on from the moment mind moved matter and made motion with intention. Intentions matter. Intentions are the fundamental magnets of moralities compass rose. Intentions are the basis of the American judicial system. Why? Because the consequences on one true intention are forever. Stretching out simultaneously into the future and the past, consequences carry on through in all directions, in all tenses, defeating a moment and the notion of time’s passage. Once motioned into this world, consequences travel time like musical notes dancing on a rubber acordian.

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2 AM FREE WRITE

Hungry. Shaky. Can’t sleep. Again.

Heater on. Cold night. Heater hums out neighbors. Plus. Cold from the inside out. A humming machine is warm because its familiar. I am still cold. Hungry, no food. Contacts came today. Glee. Parents sent them in a box. Candy inside. The only food I have is a box of Good and Plenty. Angry at my agitation. A gift is gracious. They must not understand. I am hungry. Unopened licorice and no food to my name. Day 2 like this. Cold.

It’s worth it. All of it: discomfort in body is numbed till night-time when I must sit still with it. Dreams are worth all the sacrifice one makes. Small sacrifice motions small dreams into reality’s mirage. Undefined, expansive dreams may enter the world of matter and forms from the minds imaginative eye through perseverance, an un-quivering belief in self, and an alchemical quest for knowledge of self: searching for questions and looking within oneself for the purest form of truth–that thing which we basically are.

I will graduate in December. And graduation, that diploma, means more to me with every shiver and pang. The more I sacrifice, the more motivated I am to achieve my dreams. And the discomfort dulls. And I am worth it. And my dreams are worth it. And every dream is worth it. What else is there to live for in this life and body and flash of time, a momentary collapse to an instant we call a lifetime. The more I sacrifice, the more meaningful every sunrise wake up and bus token I give to a neighbor and good conversation means. Significant. Sacrifice. Like two ropes of a swing, I am taking a ride of a lifetime and I intend to take this opportunity and wow my sense of wonder with eyes wider like empty dinner plates every day. I am grateful.

The earliest memory of a dream I have perplexes me. A serpent that was greater than its body arose from the depths of a well while I was locked inside of a room alone and wrapped itself around me about to swallow me whole. Could it be: mucalinda?

A tree near the Ajapālanigrodha in Uruvelā. The Buddha spent there the third week after the Enlightenment. There was a great shower of rain, and the Nāga king, Mucalinda, of the tree, sheltered the Buddha by winding his coils seven times round the Buddha’s body and holding his hood over the Buddha’s head (Vin.i.3; J.i.80; BuA.8, 241; Ud.ii.1; Mtn.iii.300, 302; DhSA.35). The Udāna Commentary (100f.; see also MA.i.385) adds that the space provided by the Nāga’s coils was as large as the floor space of the Lohapāsāda and that the Nāga king lived in a pond near the tree.

Bassnectar is preparing to go on tour, and to start of a chain of Wildlife (pun–the name of the tour), he just released his latest track. Watch, listen, play and download. Oh yeah, and enjoy. You can also find this at http://bassnectar.net .

Rock Star

Can you think of anything better than having all eyes on you? We didn’t think so! That’s why your dream job is standing on stage, under the spotlight, rocking out! Not selling merch, or just playing in the opening band — no, you need to be the main event. Outgoing and personable, you thrive when you can connect with others and make a big impression. And being on stage, literally or figuratively, pushes you to be your very best.

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Rock Star

Can you think of anything better than having all eyes on you? We didn’t think so! That’s why your dream job is standing on stage, under the spotlight, rocking out! Not selling merch, or just playing in the opening band — no, you need to be the main event. Outgoing and personable, you thrive when you can connect with others and make a big impression. And being on stage, literally or figuratively, pushes you to be your very best.

I was a revolutionary who lost his ideals in heroin, a philosopher who lost his integrity in crime, and a poet who lost his soul in a maximum security prison. When I escaped from that prison, over the front wall, between two gun towers, I became my country’s most wanted man. Luck ran with me and flew with me to India, where I joined the Bombay mafia. I worked as a gunrunner, a smuggler, and a counterfeiter. I was chained on three continents, beaten, stabbed and starved. I went to war. I ran into the enemy guns. And I survived, while other men around me died. They were better men than I am, most of them; better men whose lives were crunched up in mistakes, and thrown away by the wrong second of someone else’s hate, or love, or indifference. And I buried them, too many of those men, and grieved their stories and their lives into my own.

I was going through deep and silent water. Nothing and no-one could make me happy. Nothing and no-one could make me sad. I was tough. Which is probably the saddest thing you can say about a man.

There’s a truth deeper than experience. It’s beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It’s an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We’re helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn’t always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart, just as Prabhakar told it to me, just as I’m telling it to you now.

Loves are like that. You heart starts to feel like an overcrowded lifeboat. You throw your pride out to keep it afloat, and your self-respect and independence. After a while, you started throwing people out – your friends and everyone you used to know. And it’s still not enough. The lifeboat is still sinking, and you know it’s going to take down with it. I’ve seen that happen to a lot of girls. That’s why I’m sick of Love.

Indians are the Italians of Asia and vice versa. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For them, food is the music inside the body and music is the food inside the heart. Amore or Pyar makes every man a poet, a princess of peasant girl if only for second eyes of man and woman meets.

I stood in the harsh electric light of that new tunnel, in Bombay’s Arthur Road Prison, and I wanted to laugh. Hey guys, I wanted to say, can’t you be a little more original? But I couldn’t speak. Fear dries a man’s mouth, and hate strangles him. That’s why hate has no great literature: real fear and real hate have no words.

Fate gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies, and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised, and we can never know which one is which until we’ve loved them, left them, or fought them.

That’s how we keep this crazy place together – with the heart…. India is the heart. It’s the heart that keeps us together. There’s no place with people, like my people, Lin. There’s no heart like the INDIAN HEART.

It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when its all you have got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving,can become the story of your life.

I know now that it’s the sweet, sweating smell of hope, which is the opposite of hate; and its a sour, stifled smell of greed, which is the opposite of love.

The past reflects eternally between two mirrors – the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn’t do or say.

One of the reasons why we crave love, & seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, & shame, & sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.

Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that’s all there is. Love & its duty, sorrow & its truth. In the end that’s all we have – to hold on tight until the dawn.

The difference between news and gossip-News tells you what people did, gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it.

Every day, when you are on the run, is the whole of your life. Every free minute is a short story with a happy ending.

Consciousness creeps in with a stretch, a yawn, and ten words:

The Truth Demands Three Tenses to be Told.

This dream proverb is entrenched and feels so fluent, in comparison to last nights foggy dream-scape, that I am sure it has been reiterating itself forever and a night.

I have an image in my mind that visually depicts this statement, and this morning I’ll work on sketching it out. Until then, below are some multiple exposure photographs and graphic designs in process that I’m working on–